


Five Years Gone

by girl_wonder



Category: Shelter (2007)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:42:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl_wonder/pseuds/girl_wonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five Years Later</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Years Gone

At one week, it goes like this:

Zach gives his landlord notice, goes back to Cal Arts and fills out the financial paperwork. Cody is lost in tears. He doesn't quite understand yet that his mom is gone not for a day or a week or a month, but for an open ended period of time.

Shaun doesn't tell either of them that he freaks out on his own. In one day he acquired a boyfriend and a kid and although he's always fantasized about a long term relationship, the idea of it scares him.

Zach scares him. Cody scares him.

Then he unlocks the bathroom door and walks out to find Cody curled up to sleep against Zach's chest on the sofa they pulled out of his storage unit. Settling on Zach's other side, he wants to stay like this, watching black and white movies at midnight, forever. His friends say that he's practically a lesbian. He can't really deny it.

*****

At one month, it goes like this:

Zach works three days a week at an all night diner to help pay for Cody. His scholarship includes tuition and books, but it doesn't stretch to cover rent in LA, and it definitely doesn't stretch to cover the pre-school they enroll Cody in.

Zach's boss is pretty understanding, and Shaun tells himself that it won't last forever. Soon, Shaun will sell a script and they'll have enough money so that all Zach has to do is focus on school.

Still, he goes to the diner and watches Zach take orders, watches his easy smile. It's three in the afternoon and the tips are still pretty good because who wouldn't want to tip Zach?

On his way to drop off an order, Zach grins at him, licks his lips.

It's enough.

*****

At six months it goes like this:

"Let's not do this here," Zach hisses. He's still in his clothes from work, a ketchup stain on the leg of his jeans. He smells like the diner: slightly greasy, a little sweaty.

"Well, when are we going to talk about this?" Shaun asks, lowering his voice to match Zach's.

The video in the next room plays another musical number and Cody shouts, "Zach! Zach! Dad!"

"Just a minute, Cod," Zach yells back. He rubs his thumbs into his eyes. "We'll talk after he goes to bed. Ok?"

"Yeah," Shaun agrees, irritated. "Sure."

Later, he'll forget why he was so mad, why he was so irritated. Zach will say he's sorry, but Shaun will be sorrier.

He forgets sometimes that love to Zach is an entirely different brand than it is for everyone else. Love for Zach means sacrifice and giving until there's nothing left.

Shaun never wants to be someone who takes and takes from Zach, but looking at him when he comes back after putting Cody to bed, Shaun realizes that's what he's become.

"I'm sorry," Zach says. He rubs his hands over his face. "I just can't-"

"I know." Shaun hugs Zach tight and says, "I'm so sorry. I love you."

It stands there, starkly, a statement that encompasses everything and doesn't fix anything.

"I love you, too," Zach says. He tastes like toothpaste and Shaun remembers all over again that he fell in love with Zach first and only a distant second the lifestyle that they're living.

*****

At one year, it goes like this:

They enroll Cody in kindergarten at a local school and Zach goes to parent's night in a button up shirt, wearing his best khakis. He looks nervous. Cody is babbling about all the things he can show Zach.

Suddenly, face smeared with yellow macaroni and cheese, he says, "You can come, too, Shaun. You're my dad, too."

"Shaun's not your dad, Cody," Zach says, but his voice is quiet and he doesn't push the issue beyond that.

Shaun can't stand to look at Zach, so instead he says, "It's ok, Zach can tell me all about it."

The two of them come back from parent's night with a folder full of Cody's art and Zach looks a little shell shocked.

He says, "There are _three_ other gay parents."

"It's LA, dude," Shaun says, but he wraps Zach up in a hug anyway, feels Zach making fists in his shirt. Their apartment isn't as big as it could be, and sometimes it feels so small for three people.

When Cody starts putting his art up on the fridge it feels like home, though.

*****

At two years, it goes like this:

Shaun's second book comes out. It's a book about growing up feeling disconnected from everything around you and then meeting someone so connected to other people that you fall in love with them.

Zach smiles a little when he reads it, a little puzzled, a little bemused. Shaun kisses him until it doesn't matter.

After he reads it, Gabe calls Shaun, says, "That's exactly his problem."

"Zach's?" Shaun asks, finishing a PB&J sandwich for Cody.

"Yeah," Gabe says. "He loves people and he gets involved in their lives and it's like he doesn't know how to be friends with you without loving you, you know?"

"Yeah," Shaun agrees. He starts skinning a carrot. "I love him, though."

"Oh, me, too," Gabe agrees. "You two going to come up for Christmas? Mom wants to buy Cody like a bike or something. Dude. She thinks he's her grandson."

"Maybe," Shaun says. Zach is finishing an art project in the living room, his wrist stained with paint. He looks golden.

*****

At three years, it goes like this:

Jeanne comes back with a new boyfriend. This one's name is Rudy or Robbie or something. He spends most of the time high. She seems happy enough, eager to see Cody. She's been back a couple of times, already. Never staying, because they don't have room for her and her boyfriend.

She looks easier in the eyes than the last time Shaun saw her. It makes him feel guilty and mad at the same time.

There's an awkwardness between her and Zach, and he can't tell if it's always been there or if it's new. If he caused it.

When he thinks about her from before, he always thinks about her looking out for Shaun. He thinks about that time that he had to drive out to Malibu to pick up Gabe because Gabe was too drunk to drive and too stoned to figure out a train. That was really the first time he met her, because she was there to pick up Zach.

They forced the boys to sit quietly in a breakfast place while they ate and had coffee and pretended that they were too cool to be worried about their younger brothers.

Now, it's Zach who had to drive up to Oakland to bail her out of jail, it's Zach who takes her three a.m. calls. In a different world, maybe she could have still been that older sister who bought an extra coffee to go for her younger brother before she drove the distance from Malibu to San Pedro.

It's three years that Cody's been living with them and she and Zach go out to lunch and when they come back, Zach looks like he might cry but Jeanne _is_ crying.

She hugs Cody goodbye and takes her new boyfriend out.

"She signed the papers," Zach says, after they've put Cody to bed twice.

When Jeanne comes and goes, Cody gets clingy again. He needs Zach to stay in his room until he's really solidly down. He needs Zach to come running if he wakes up.

For all the bullshit that went down with his mom remarrying and a new stepfather that wasn't their real dad, Shaun doesn't think he'll ever know the sort of abandonment that Cody feels.

"He's yours?" Shaun can't quite believe it. They've been talking about it for a year and Jeanne keeps going back and forth. Some days she wants it, other days she screams and fights over the phone that Cody's her son, _hers_ and Zach can't take him away.

"Yeah," Zach's not crying. He keeps looking out their window, towards the skyline.

"Wow."

"Yeah," Zach agrees.

When they first started talking about it, the hardest part was telling to Cody about it. He'd been uncertain, asking whether Jeanne would still be his mom, asking if Zach would be his real dad. He didn't understand that it was all legal, that everything would be the same. It had been too long in coming, they'd had too many close calls. One medical emergency where Zach couldn't sign the papers, and the state might have started looking into it.

Shaun always felt one medical emergency away from losing Cody forever.

"Cody's going to be happy," Shaun says, coming up behind Zach. He wraps his arms around Zach and rests his chin on his shoulder.

It's comfortable.

"I don't think so," Zach says. "Were you?"

There isn't much to say to that.

*****

At four years, it goes like this:

They want to make a movie out of the book and it's completely not how it's done, but Shaun writes a script and sends it to his agent. She loves it, but she loves everything he does, and sends it on to Hollywood.

The next thing he knows, someone who works for someone who works for JJ Abrams is calling asking if he has anything else on spec.

He sends them the pilot he's been tinkering with for years.

It's more about Zach, but this time it's about a more mature Zach who isn't the main character, just a side one. It's about a group of twenty-somethings in LA trying to make a living. The dialog is realistic and that's "in" right now, the somebody who knows somebody says.

"It's hip, we love it."

There are meetings and checks and suddenly, he's coming home with enough money that he says, "You can quit the diner job."

Zach looks genuinely surprised and then genuinely mad.

Money is the only thing that they fight over regularly. The argument lasts for a week and then Zach comes home, says, "I quit."

And it's such a relief that they celebrate with a dinner out, Cody ordering four different dinners and three different deserts. Shaun can see Zach trying not to pull Cody back, make him ask for less.

The week after he quits, Zach paints over the mural he'd drawn on their bedroom wall and starts a new one. He's finishing up at Cal Arts and has a line on a job working for a t-shirt company. He seems happy enough, and he has a few dinners with his professors.

Then, it's time for the end of the year show, and Zach is painting all the time. He paints street art onto Shaun's back and takes a photo, he screens something abstract onto canvass and Shaun thinks he's pretty cultured but even he doesn't get it.

At the show, Cody wears himself out and Shaun offers to take him home. Zach stays and comes home late, grinning. They have sex on the couch, quiet in case Cody wakes up.

"I got a job offer," Zach says, as they're rushing Cody out the door the next morning.

"Not the t-shirt company?" Shaun is trying to tie his tie and slip on his shoes but he manages to sound cheerful.

"Ad agency," Zach says.

"That's great, man," Shaun says. He leans over for a kiss. "Talk when we get home?"

Cody's tugging on his hand and they start towards the elevators as Zach waves them off.

*****

At five years, it goes like this:

They move into a new place and Shaun doesn't get any ribbing from his friends because half of them have settled down, too, and the other half have been replaced by guys that want the same things he does. Happiness, a nice boyfriend, a life.

Cody comes home from school with a black eye and they have to go meet with the principal and Shaun doesn't understand, but Zach seems to. Zach and Cody go out and when they come back, Cody seems a lot less mad, a little happier.

The tv series is going well; they're talking about a second season. One of the extras propositions him when he's on set and he turns the guy down. The two leads crack up and one slings his arm over Shaun's shoulders.

"Shaunie here is married, capital M."

Shaun laughs with everyone else and it's not a big deal, it's just enough of a thing that when he comes home, he sees Zach and says, "Are we married?"

Zach rolls his eyes, turning off the monster movie on tv. "C'mon. I'm ready for bed."

It's five years later, and Shaun follows him to bed, looks in at Cody asleep and thinks that he's not scared any more.

*****

end


End file.
